It is Monday 19th December 2022, in a sweltering Karachi. Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope are out in the middle of the National Stadium engineering England to knock off a meagre total of 170 and complete a highly impressive 3-0 series win in Pakistan. The win comes after debutant leg spinner Rehan Ahmed has come in at number three, Ben Stokes’s bat has careered up into the air and Harry Brook completed his third consecutive century in the first innings. And this is not to forget the drama of the Rawalpindi and Multan test matches when England defied flat pitches and eked out victories.
The start of this wild ride can be traced back to May 2022 when Brendon McCullum, former New Zealand cricketer, was appointed coach of the England men’s test team and Ben Stokes, England’s behemoth, was made captain. There were promises of excitement and a positive attitude, but it appeared uncertain until the start of the test summer when New Zealand were 7-3 and the potential of these two mavericks became clear. England won the first test against the Kiwis after Joe Root, England’s former captain, freed from months of torment, scored a century hundred and passed 10,000 runs.
Matt Roller, assistant editor at ESPN Cricinfo, views the ascent as a “real triumph of leadership” but also commented that “in terms of whether anyone would have seen the run of results and the scale of it coming, I don’t think so”.
An injection of positivity and belief can transform an ailing team with one win in 17 to one with nine wins in 10 with largely the same players.
Roller’s view is that “they’re performing much closer to that expectation under this regime”. Under the previous leadership, England had underperformed, given their resources, infrastructure, and players.
After Lord’s, the success rolled on to Trent Bridge. Having conceded 553 in the first innings, England scored 539 and went on to win the test. This was perhaps the epiphanic moment of the Bazball revolution because of Jonny Bairstow’s second-innings hundred.
The stats surrounding this further demonstrate the turnaround: at lunch England needed 299 from 72 overs, a challenging target in any circumstances. But they chased it down with 22 overs to spare with Bairstow only just missing out on the fastest ever test hundred by an England player.
Arguably, England’s greatest win didn’t come until the autumn when they headed off to Pakistan, where they hadn’t played a test for 17 years. The first match took place in Rawalpindi on a very flat pitch. England went on to rack up 657 in 100 overs with four centuries. In their two innings, they scored at 6.73 runs per over breaking their own record of 5.40 set in the summer.
These numbers are a tangible demonstration of the brave new world because they are in direct contravention of the decades of test cricket that have gone before. Furthermore, it was so dramatically different to England’s slow, conservative play under Joe Root and Chris Silverwood.
On the last day of the Rawalpindi test, they took eight wickets, the last one with only minutes of the day left. When Jack Leach spun the ball onto the pad of Naseem Shah and caused scenes of jubilation, it felt like the team had achieved something very special. Journalists, spectators, and pundits were all searching for logical explanations.
Roller has commented that “they’ve taken ten wickets in every innings they’ve bowled in under this new regime, I think they kept this up in Pakistan”, a remarkable feat given the flat, unresponsive pitches.
Roller attributed this to Stokes’s leadership and his side’s flexibility saying, “it’s easy to sort of look at it through the lens of being ultra-attacking, ultra-positive, but at times when they’ve needed to soak up pressure or bowl dry spells, they’ve been able to do that as well”.
After the drama of Rawalpindi, England moved on to Multan. This was equally dramatic with Mark Wood sealing the victory and series win. England did collapse on the third morning, and victory arguably looked doable for Pakistan but the fact that despite several injuries, a formerly chronically injured Mark Wood ensured victory showed that maybe the days of England’s being hampered by injury-ridden fast bowlers are over. The Bazball revolution has conjured up many stories of goodwill and the victorious return of Mark Wood was another.
Harry Brook made his debut at the end of the English summer in the series against New Zealand. In the second test in Multan, he scored a century in the second innings, taking the opportunity provided by Jonny Bairstow’s freak injury to establish himself in the middle order. Roller said: “Harry Brook obviously had an unbelievable first test of the series and then the first innings of the second test was caught at mid-off off Abrar Ahmed for 9 having a bit of a wild slog. He’s spoken about this in a press conference or on the radio after that game. And he said it was a reminder to him that as much as his focus needs to be on attack and being positive, he could also occasionally put that away if he needed to.”
The tour reached its conclusion with the final test in Karachi. It ensured England a 3-0 series victory in Pakistan.
The third test will be remembered for the emergence of Rehan Ahmed, Leicestershire’s spin prodigy, who took 5-48 in Pakistan’s second innings despite being the youngest man ever to play a test for England. His beaming smile as he held the ball aloft with his dad in the crowd was an epitome of the joy and childlike thrill that is inherent to the new regime’s style.
In winning the series, England also became the first visiting team to win a three-match series in the country. Previous England teams had only managed two victories in 30 attempts, and this was only the fourth time England had clean swept a series away from home.
This remarkable revolution has re-engaged a country with test cricket and given life to a form of the game that was floundering.
New Zealand and Ireland await before the Ashes commences in June. After Pakistan, who knows what’s to come?
As Matt Roller commented, “I don’t know where it ends but I suppose that’s probably the joy of it I guess”. This upturn has re-engaged a nation with its men’s test team and reignited a childlike love for the game. We have new heroes; young fans have new role models and that’s what it’s all about.
N Rowland Sports Writer 
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